Blending is one of the most important early literacy skills students learn in kindergarten. Without it, they can’t smoothly move from recognizing individual sounds to reading whole words. For some kids, blending clicks quickly, but for others, it takes repeated practice and a variety of approaches before it finally sticks.
If you’ve ever sat down with a small group of students to teach phonics, you already know the struggle… every child is at a different place. Some are still working on letter recognition, others are confidently identifying beginning sounds, and a few are ready for blends and word families. Although
Small group time is one of the most powerful parts of the day in a primary classroom. It’s where you can give students more individualized instruction, target specific skills, and see their growth up close. But let’s be honest. . . it can also feel a little overwhelming when you’re
If you’ve ever wondered when the right time is to dive into letter sounds with your students, you’re not alone. As primary teachers, we know that teaching the alphabet isn’t just about singing the ABCs or identifying letters on flashcards. Before we move into phonics instruction, we need to make
Learning to read is not just a one-and-done type of activity. There are many skills students must learn and put together to become fluent readers. Many of these skills fall under the umbrella of phonemic awareness. And, for many kids, one of the most difficult…is phoneme manipulation. Over the years,
Teaching young students to read is one of the most exciting things that primary teachers get to do. It’s pretty amazing to watch a student progress from letter identification, to letter sounds, to CVC words. Along the way, we work on other skills too – like rhyming. This is arguably
As kindergarten teachers, so much of our day is focused on phonemic awareness skills that will lay the foundation for reading. Our students must learn many foundational skills long before they are ready to read. Today, I want to take a closer look at part of this process and talk
Are you looking for more engaging ways to teach phonics topics in your room? I think if you’re a kindergarten, or primary teacher, the answer is always YES! Kiddos in the primary classroom are going a million miles a minute, so anything we choose to use in our lessons has
Looking for fun and engaging ways to teach middle sounds in your phonics lessons? Come along to see how small group games transformed my teaching when it came to this skill. Not only will your students be engaged and grasp middle sounds with ease, but they’ll also have fun along
As a primary teacher, my main objective is to make sure my kids are learning all of the foundational skills they need in an engaging format. I don’t want them JUST to learn. I want them to have fun learning! Because of this, I’ve learned some tips and tricks to